Italian Recipe Exchange: Walnut and Roasted Garlic Pesto

Here’s a really delicious recipe I got from Cindy, my hair stylist extraordinaire (go see her at Crown Salon if you want to look gorgeous). In addition to being an expert colorist and hair revamper, she’s also an accomplished and dedicated cook. Routinely she brings little bites of unusual sweet things she’s made, such as chocolate squares flavored with chilies, for her clients to nibble on while they’re in her chair.

This is her interpretation of the walnut pesto served on crostini at Gottino, a wine bar in the West Village in Manhattan that we both like very much. I did a little review of the place when it first opened a couple of years back. The pesto at Gottino, as I recall it, was basically walnuts, a bit of garlic, olive oil, and Parmigiano. Cindy says they also throw in a few sun-dried tomatoes (not sure how I missed that). I make a very simple version, often using instead of the parmigiano a few anchovies. This is great for pasta and spread on crostini, as they do it at Gottino.

Since I concoct my own interpretations of restaurant dishes all the time, it’s always interesting to see how other people taste dishes and then make them their own, and that’s partly what I want these new postings to be about, self expression, whether it’s a restaurant recipe or an old Italian family dish you’ve reconfigured. I say, bring it on.

Cindy’s pesto is more elaborate then the one from Gottino. First off, she roasts the garlic, giving it a rich mellow undertone, and then adds lemon juice and zest for brightness. She goes on to round the whole thing out with fresh thyme and rosemary. It’s a lovely melding of flavors. Her suggestion to toss a little of it into a dish of pasta with spinach seemed right on to me, although I didn’t try it that way. The first night I spread it on crostini, and on night two I decided at the last minute to stir some into chicken sautéed with white wine and shallots. It was really a lovely addition (and this stuff keeps for about four days, so you can have it ready for impromptu dishes like this one or for an easy appetizer to offer to unexpected drop-ins).

With this Italian recipe exchange, what I try to do is keep the recipe as much as possible in the style written by the cook. Some recipes need more help than others, and I’m happy to tinker or just plain out show someone how to do it. Cindy instinctively knew how to do it. All I did in her case was put the ingredients in the order of use. But even if you send me a “talk it through” style of recipe (the way the great British food writer Elizabeth David wrote many of hers), that’s fine with me.

I love the way Cindy ends the recipe saying, “Taste it, and add more cheese or tomatoes or lemon juice until you like it.” Very good advice and often overlooked.

Here is her note and recipe:

Hey Erica, is this how you do it? Ha!

I often stop into Gottino in the West Village for a lovely glass of Italian wine, and I much enjoy their walnut pesto . . . so I did a variation on my own at home. I enjoy it on a crostini, tossed with pasta and spinach, in an omelette, on pizza . . . let’s just say I ENJOY.

Place the sun-dried tomatoes in a jar, and cover them with olive oil. Put the lid on. Let it sit out overnight to soften the tomatoes and flavor the oil.

Roast the garlic: I like to peel the cloves, put them on a piece of parchment paper, drizzle them with olive oil and salt, then wrap the parchment into an envelope, then wrap THAT in foil. Then bake at 350 for about 40 minutes, until they are soft.

Zest the lemon, and then squeeze all of the juice out. You’ll need both!

I’m not super perfect with measuring, so maybe Erica can recommend here . . . but I take about 1 to 1½ cups of walnut halves and put them in the food processor. Add 3 – 5 chopped sun-dried tomatoes, the zest of the lemon and about 1 tablespoon of lemon juice, 5 – 6 cloves of roasted garlic, 1 – 2 ounces of Parmigiano Reggiano, and the herbs. Pulse everything, then add the olive oil from the sun-dried tomatoes by mixing in with a fork. Taste it and add more cheese or tomatoes or lemon juice until you like it.

Welcome to Ericademane.com

I am a chef, food writer, and teacher who specializes in improvisational Italian cooking. I am the author of The Flavors of Southern Italy and Pasta Improvvisata, as well as Williams-Sonoma Pasta, which is available at Williams-Sonoma stores. A member of the Association of Culinary Professionals and the Italian-based International Slow Food Movement, I live in New York City. I offer private cooking classes, which you can learn about here.

Favorite Things

Dining with the Saints

Please check out www.novena.com for my monthly column "Dining with the Saints," which features recipes for saints' days. The beautiful, art-filled blog is written by Barbara Calamari and Sandra DiPasqua and includes the stories of the lives of saints and monthly novenas and prayers. They've written many books on the subject and really know their stuff. I, on the other hand, am a fraud, a Catholic lapsed all the way to atheism. But I love researching and creating great recipes to go with these amazing stories.

The Italian Recipe Exchange

Would you like to share one of your favorite Italian recipes with the world? Please click here to find out how.

Women with Fish

An ongoing series of photos of anything that can be considered "Women with Fish." If you have any photo you'd like to see in it, send it along to me, at edemane@earthlink.net.

Archival Articles

. . . containing hundreds of recipes are being posted as blog posts, dated back to when they first appeared. Look for them by browsing through the archival index ("Categories") above or by using the search window at the top of this page. Thanks for your patience.